One day, your car may provide energy to the building your office is in while it's parked – and you'll be paid for it. Sound far-fetched? In fact, this may be right around the corner. The world's largest transactive energy project is launching in downtown Toronto, and it's being developed by Toronto, Ontario based Peak Power.

The power system of the future is digital and connected

'Transactive energy', is a forward-thinking concept for managing the flow or exchange of energy within a power system using a market-based approach. For Peak Power's project, its Energy Market Platform will enable real-time, frictionless buying and selling of distributed energy resources.

The centralized power plants and massive transmission lines that bring power to the middle of nowhere will soon be a thing of the past, says Derek Lim Soo, Co-founder and CEO of Peak Power. After several years in the industry, Lim Soo was early to identify the shift toward what he calls ‘distributed energy resources;' flexible sources of energy, which could take the form of anything from a large, industrial battery to those that power electric vehicles. "With the increased frequency of extreme weather patterns as well as demand from savvy customers looking for smarter solutions, I began to realize that the growth of the energy industry in the foreseeable future will be about owning or optimizing these resources, and that's how Peak Power came into existence".

Founded in 2015, Peak Power combines predictive software and energy storage to reduce the strain felt by electrical utilities and large energy users during peak times. Its primary offering is Peak Synergy™, which uses machine learning and real-time optimization algorithms to maximize savings and revenues from energy storage assets while empowering facility owners to better manage their energy costs and reliability.

The company already works with best-in-class strategic partners to ensure it brings the most innovative and cost-efficient solutions to its clients. Among these is their lead investor, Osmington Inc., a private commercial real-estate company owned and controlled by David Thomson, Chairman of Thomson-Reuters.

"We provide building owners somewhere between 15% to 20% savings, on-site resiliency and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction," explains Lim Soo. "But nonetheless, it was difficult to get our first customers, and that's why we were lucky to have Starlight and Thomson Reuters become some of our first clients".

Now that the company has been successful in Ontario, Peak Power is aggressively expanding across the U.S., with a presence already in New York City, Boston and San Diego. "A key advantage of operating in Ontario has been the complexity of the energy market structure here. As the annual system demand peaks are not known in advance, it's forced us to come up with a much more robust solution that doesn't rely on signals from a system operator – meaning it's viable around the world", says Lim Soo.